Member libraries of CW/MARS (including the Worcester Public Library) are migrating to a new catalog software (Evergreen) on Memorial Day weekend. This will impact library patrons in quite a few ways.

With the migration to Evergreen, your existing library history will no longer be accessible. If you want to keep a record of what you’ve checked out, you’ll need to export your library history before May 25.

Here’s how:

When you’ve logged into your library account, select the My Reading History button on the right side of the page:

You’ll be brought to your reading history. Click on the Export List option (third from the left):

When you are brought to the Export List page, click on theSelect Alllink before the list of items:

Then enter your email address and press the Submit button:

This process could take a while — be patient!

(I estimate it took 3 minutes to export my rather large list and receive the email.)

Please share these instructions with anyone you know who uses the library!

we did however find the Hanging Tree. Local legend knows Deed Rock as “Will Rock.” In fact, all the correspondents who have written me about the rock have called it Will Rock. It is only in researching the subject at the Worcester Historical Museum that I learned that its historical name is Deed Rock. Local legend has it that the “will” carved thereon is from a man who hung himself from a tree at a fork in the road where the old lane enters the Hermitage, thus “cursing” this area. There actually is a short chain hanging from a fork high in that tree, mute testimony to superstition.

Our next-door neighbor grew up in the caretaker’s cottage at the Hermitage, and that “spooky” chain in the “hanging” tree is his — he used it to hoist engines out of cars he was working on.

Which I believe shows that most spooky stories told by neighborhood kids have their origins in car repair.

…

A few links about Parsons Cider Mill/God’s Acre/Hermitage/Deed Rock, of interest: